{"id":26,"date":"2008-06-27T16:12:25","date_gmt":"2008-06-27T16:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2008\/06\/fashion-flash-pope-does-not-we.html"},"modified":"2008-06-27T16:12:25","modified_gmt":"2008-06-27T16:12:25","slug":"fashion-flash-pope-does-not-we","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/06\/fashion-flash-pope-does-not-we.html","title":{"rendered":"FASHION UPDATE! Pope does NOT wear Prada"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Papal<\/span> L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, confirms rumors<\/a> that those nifty red loafers Benedict XVI has worn since the day after his election are not name brand, but personally cobbled by some Vatican Geppetto. According to the AP:<\/p>\n

“Obviously the attribution was false,” the Vatican newspaper said in its Thursday’s editions. “Such rumors are inconsistent with the simple and somber man who, on the day of his election to the papacy, showed to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square and to the whole world the sleeves of a modest black sweater,” it said.
\nL’Osservatore Romano said the pope’s interest in clothes has nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with liturgy — what symbolism traditional garments can bring to the Christian liturgy.
\n“The pope, therefore, does not wear Prada, but Christ,” L’Osservatore said. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Papal<\/span> I still think they could market papal loafers and make some real cash–more than the few Euros those Swiss Guard keychains fetch…
\nAGGIORNAMENTO<\/strong>: Lest anyone think these fashion posts are about frippery or flippery, I do consider these matters with a serious side, as well as a good bit of fun and history (which I consider one and the same). In that regard, I would point folks to the blogs of Fr. Guy Selvester, a priest of the Diocese of Metuchen in my native New Jersey and the reigning expert (well, outside of the papal apartments) in ecclesiastical heraldry and vesture<\/a> as well as a fine blogger and founder of “Shouts in the Piazza.” <\/a>It was from Father Guy that I first heard, months ago, word that the pope did not in fact wear Prada. Nonetheless, the official Vatican confirmation is newsworthy.
\nAlong with that, I’d direct interested readers to the latest from Sandro Magister’s Chiesa website, where his latest essay <\/a>brings together all the sundry issues here, from Prada to the motu proprio, and puts them in a larger context with the help of the pontiff’s own MC, Msgr. Guido Marini. Whether one welcomes these developments or fears them is a pretty good gut check for where you stand on this papacy, and Vatican II, and the foreseeable future of the church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, confirms rumors that those nifty red loafers Benedict XVI has worn since the day after his election are not name brand, but personally cobbled by some Vatican Geppetto. According to the AP: “Obviously the attribution was false,” the Vatican newspaper said in its Thursday’s editions. “Such rumors are inconsistent…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop-culture","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nFASHION UPDATE! 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According to the AP: “Obviously the attribution was false,” the Vatican newspaper said in its Thursday’s editions. “Such rumors are inconsistent…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/06\/fashion-flash-pope-does-not-we.html","og_site_name":"Pontifications","article_published_time":"2008-06-27T16:12:25+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/Papal%20shoes%202.jpg"}],"author":"David Gibson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/06\/fashion-flash-pope-does-not-we.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/06\/fashion-flash-pope-does-not-we.html","name":"FASHION UPDATE! 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}